Photojournalist struck twice with baton amid LA immigration protests

Freelance photojournalist Moon Mandel was exposed to chemical irritants by federal officers and later hit twice with a baton by Los Angeles police while documenting anti-deportation protests in the California city on Jan. 30, 2026.

The demonstration was part of nationwide protests that began that day and also followed similar protests in Minnesota, where federal officers had shot and killed two U.S. citizens. In LA, sweeping immigration enforcement has continued since June.

The protests started at around 1 p.m. near City Hall in downtown LA, before demonstrators made their way to the nearby Metropolitan Detention Center, where immigrants have been held since June 2025.

Mandel told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the protest and the Department of Homeland Security response to it unfolded more or less like the others that they had witnessed.

“Usually it’s a bunch of people at the MDC and things get a little hairy — whether it’s DHS or deputized police officers employing tear gas or pepper bullets or flash bangs, it’s all pretty much business as usual for them,” they said. “By the time I had gotten there, demonstrators had taken trash out of the dumpster that was located on site — a 40-yard dumpster — and had used it to create some distance between themselves and the officers.”

Mandel added that some individuals were throwing various articles of garbage at the federal officers, while others used the trash to cover a fence to thwart the deployment of chemical munitions against the crowd.

“I did not anticipate the conflict level escalating to that,” Mandel told the Tracker, noting that they hadn’t worn any protective equipment that day. “When the Department of Homeland Security started utilizing pepper bullets and tear gas, I lost the ability to see and vomited at least four times.”

Mandel said they had their eyes washed out and were able to continue reporting for a couple of hours. As the evening progressed, they said, Los Angeles Police Department officers were called in to aid DHS in dispersing the crowd.

“Anyone who did not move back fast enough was either hit or arrested or shot with rubber bullets or pepper munitions,” they said.

Mandel repeatedly identified themself as a journalist to the officers in front of them, although as a freelancer not on contract, they had chosen not to wear clothing that identified them as press.

“I’m at the front line, and I’ve got my camera trained on the police officers,” they told the Tracker. “I’m trying my best to comply. Obviously, I can’t back up too fast because there are people behind me, and I’m not going to push them over.

“One of the cops who I was not interacting with, he kind of comes from a different part of the line, believing — at least from my perspective — that I’m not walking back fast enough, and hits me once with a baton. Naturally, I’m like, ‘Hey, whoa, let’s chill.’ And then he just comes back in and hits me again with the baton, right in the sternum.”

They noted that the blow pushed them back into a camera operator behind them, additionally bruising their shoulder.

Throughout the interaction, Mandel said, they were wearing bright yellow fireproof clothing akin to that used by wildland firefighters, and were clearly not a participant.

“It’s not my job to yell at the police officers. It’s not my job to tell them what I think,” Mandel told the Tracker. “It’s my job to be there as a witness.”

The actions of both DHS and the LAPD on Jan. 30 appeared to violate California law prohibiting law enforcement from using violent protest policing tactics with members of the press, which courts reinforced with preliminary injunctions issued to both agencies last year.

Requests for comment from the agencies were not immediately returned. In a social media post on X the evening of the protest, the LAPD said it used crowd-control munitions in response to violence against officers, but it did not address the use of force against journalists.

In a Jan. 31 post on his social media platform, President Donald Trump wrote that federal agents would participate in policing protests only if requested, but that he had instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol “to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property.”